This Afternoon I walked out on to my balcony of my new beach house, and looked out to see that there was still no wind, but little swell. I asked if my room mate if he wanted to go on a paddle and he said he was down. After putting on a couple layers of sun screen and my biggest hat, I was headed down to the beach. My friend Stan and I started out are paddle towards the swim bouys then headed south toward the pass. The wind was starting to pick up so it gave us a nice tail wind to get some speed down the waves. Soon we got to the jetti and found that the current was ripping out. As we took the left turn inside the pass you could see dark shapes trying to swim up stream, but it looked like they were just staying in one spot. Since there was soo much current Stan and I stuck close to sand bar to avoid the deep water current. As we headed farther toward the sand bar I noticed an eddy in the current. The water made a small u and the headed toward the edge of the sand bar. This is when the work out really started! I hugged the shore line and started to head north. It was fun looking down under the docks to see all diffrent shapes of sheephead. By now I was up to the fish charters, there were alot of people sitting out on the dock about to go out on there own adventure. Is if things were not perfect enough a dolphin and its pod started fishing right in front of us. As we headed toward the PAG Marina the pod followed, a couple times they came in a paddle distance. By the time we got to the marina we agreed that we had to have a final race up to the bridge right next to SeaCritters. During the race people at the Warf started to cheer. By the time we finished the race we let the current drift us down to the marina. We walked the boards not even a block back to the house and called it a day.

Yesterday around 2pm I get to south beach around 2nd street for a little stand up paddle boarding. I head out to the buoys and after a few minutes of paddling. I see 3 to 4 sharks about 6 feet long a few feet from me (not sure what type of shark they were). They didn't seem to care too much about me, so after a few seconds a paddled back to shore. I talk with another surfer and he saw them the previous day. After a an hour i paddle out to the again and they seemed to be gone. Just be carefully when heading out in the Miami Beach area.

Thanks for the heads up. Wonder if they are some late spinners in the migration? Or, maybe they are part of the regular crew around the inlet where sharks like to frequent.

Here's a question, how do sharks interact with standup? For whatever reasons they "seem" to ignore kiters while planning in many cases, different story when in the water. They sometimes show an interest in surfers paddling into waves particularly when bait is in the area. Many attacks over the years support that conclusion. What do they think of guys riding standup, if anything? What experiences have folks had with swim by's, apparent stalking, again, if any?

Laura and I went out for an interesting roundwinder the other day. She was on the ULI inflatable board and I was in her kayak. We launched off the beach about a 1/2 mile south of Spanish River Blvd. in Boca Raton. Conditions were calm but being early summer, it might not stay that way. We paddled about three miles north to the Holiday Inn on the beach in Highland Beach. Grabbed lunch, looking at a nasty looking squall moving in from the west. Finished up, hit the water again, now chopped up to around 1 to 2 ft. and building with the squall related wind. The paddling became pretty slow, missed most of the rain hitting to the north and south as the breeze continued to increase. We swapped craft to even up the load of paddling into all this stuff. Lets say going down went a lot faster and easier the coming back. Still, it was an interesting session. Standup to lunch, nice concept particularly as the wind eases along with the storm prospects in a couple of weeks, maybe.

Last weekend I was doing my usual morning paddle and was heading north in the channel between Davis and Harbour Islands in Tampa, hugging the seawall to avoid the Saturday onslaught of recreational boaters. I was thinking of a show I had just watched on the NG Channel the night before about the fresh water adaptability of bull sharks when I heard a large splash behind me. Then a large shadow crossed under my board, then another, and another. Then one of the shadows surfaced to get a gulp of air. I was in the company of a pod of four adult manatees. I paddled with them for about a mile and they never once executed any evasive action. At one point, two of them surfaced, each on one side of my board, so close I couldn't paddle anymore for fear of hitting them with my paddle. They remained for a moment checking me out, then continued in their slow trek up the canal. Any powerful thrust of their tails would have sent me into the water, but they only propelled themselves just enough to clear the space around the board. I continued with them until the mouth of the Hillsboro River and then we parted ways. Life is good.

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